We all have that one experience in life that creates a wonderful memory. A memory is like a photograph taken by the heart to make a special moment last forever. That special moment that still replays in my head over and over is the first time I was taken out of the country as a little girl. It was a long awaited adventure that hadn’t turned out completely as planned, but was a once in a lifetime experience.

It was Saturday when I was awoken by the sound of my mother screaming. I was about 8 years old at the time and was terrified that something was wrong. I sprung out of bed and asked, “What’s wrong?” I was completely ignored as my mom’s screaming overpowered my fragile morning voice. Annoyed, I went back to my room and waited until she was finished.

After all of the screaming was over, she came to my room and had a huge grin on her face. She yelled, “We’re finally going on vacation out of the country!” Going on a vacation out of the country was always on our minds, but we never had the time to do it. My mom was always working and could never get the time off.

I was ecstatic. I started jumping around the room like a kangaroo and screamed “Yay! Yay! Yay!”

I stopped for a moment and wondered what country we were going to. I decided to ask. My mom then replied, “Italy.” Italy was the country I’ve always dreamed of going to. Not just because Italian food was my favorite, but because I was fascinated with the architecture of the buildings as well as the Italian accent. I couldn’t wait!

My parents had seen a discount on the internet for the tickets to go to Italy. They had to get the offer fast before it ran out. There were only a few tickets left, and right when they were about to get the tickets, they had sold out.

My heart stopped. I asked, “What happened?” My parents then told me that the tickets were all gone. I was so excited… How could this happen?

“Just our luck,” I said as I started to run to my room while almost in tears.

“Wait a minute,” my dad said, “there’s another offer here to go to Ireland.”

“Ireland…?” I said in a disappointed voice.

“I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think it will. What have we got to lose? We all wanted to go on a vacation and now is our chance,” he said.

My parents had gotten the tickets to Ireland. I still wasn’t very happy but there’s nothing I could really do about it. At least we were going somewhere. I’ve been stuck in this same old boring country for a long time. I longed to go somewhere. I was a caterpillar just waiting to burst out of its cocoon.

The tickets said the flight was in a week. “I have to pack right this minute!” I thought. I grabbed my clothes and shoved them into my suitcase. Although we were only going to be there for a week, I needed options! I grabbed all of my favorite things to do: my coloring books, some of my dolls, and a few books. “There,” I said, “I’ve got everything I need.”

The time finally came after what seemed like a year. We were leaving to go to the airport. We had already gotten our passports because we had planned to go places before, but never really got to at the time.

My mom said to everyone, “Make sure you get all of your suitcases before we leave the house.”

“I’ve got all of mine,” I said, “Do you, dad?” My dad nodded his head because his hands were full and he had the tickets in his mouth. I laughed and said, “Okay, now let’s go!”

We arrived at the airport a little earlier than we expected, so I had to wait around for a while. I decided to go into the souvenir shops with my mom so I wouldn’t get bored. Because we were living in Arizona at the time, we saw lots of cacti on statues, along with mugs with the Grand Canyon on them.

Time flew by and it was finally time to board the plane. I’d never been on a plane before. I was excited but nervous at the same time. I’d heard all of the bad things that happened to people on planes and I didn’t want that happening to ours. Despite my nervousness, I toughened up and hopped onto the plane with my mom and dad.

We were going to be on the plane for a long time since we were going to the other side of the world! I kept myself busy by coloring, reading, and playing with some of my dolls until it was time to eat.

When the time came, I decided to have the chicken salad with crackers. It came with grapes, but I didn’t like grapes so I gave them to my parents. After I ate, I decided I would take a nap since we still had about 4 more hours until we arrived in Ireland.

I awoke to the sound of my mom calling out my name. “Cassie, wake up,” she said, “We’re here!”

I jumped up and suddenly got excited. I dashed off the plane and walked into the Dublin airport. It wasn’t as big as I’d expected it to be, but that didn’t matter because all I wanted to do was see what was outside.

After what seemed like hours of waiting to get our luggage, we were off to our shuttle so we could go get our rental car. The shuttle was also a little small so we had to squeeze in with more people. I found it quite strange that the driver was driving on the wrong side of the road, so I asked my dad why he was doing that.

“He’s not driving on the wrong side of the road, people in Ireland drive on the left side of the road instead of on the right side,” said my dad. I still didn’t really understand why we all just don’t ride on the same side of the road, but I didn’t bother asking. I just wanted to hurry to the rental car place so we could go to our hotel already!

We had gotten our rental car and were off to our hotel. My mom and I were laughing because it took my dad a while to get used to driving on the other side of the road, but he got it eventually.

We were staying in Dublin for our entire trip. We passed by buildings that were so different from the ones in America. The architecture of the buildings were much more detailed and had more history behind them.

The hotel we were staying at was called The Morgan Hotel. My parents said that the hotel was going to be very nice but I wanted to see it with my own eyes before I could make any judgments about it.

When we pulled up to the hotel, it was huge. It looked very nice and I could already tell I was going to like it very much. My dad decided to go up to the desk and said we could go straight to the room since we had already made a reservation.

I walked into the room and my eyes lit up like a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Everything was so boutique-esque. The sheets were white as snow; the pillows were as tall as Mount Everest. The room had a small yet cozy feel when you walked in. You could tell the room was a bit more posh than the ones in America, but I loved it.

I said, “This room could just be a vacation for me!” My parents agreed.

As much as I wanted to just stay in the room and lounge around, we had to go because we had a lot of stuff planned out for the week.

The week went by slowly. We visited shops, restaurants, museums, landmarks, and attractions. I’ll never forget the first time I went to Ireland. It felt so enchanting. All along I thought it was going to turn out as a disaster, but in the end I wouldn’t have picked a better place to go.